Reported campus crime up 25 percent

When Steinhardt senior Dan Wang reached into her pocket to pull out her ID to access the computer lab on Washington Place yesterday, she realized it wasn't there. Neither was her iPod touch.

She rushed back to the Waverly Building where her class had just let out. But it was too late.
"I felt really careless," Wang said, who believes she left the items behind and a student passing by pocketed them.

Wang is not the only recent victim of theft. According to a WSN analysis of the university's campus crime logs that compared statistics from fall semester 2008 to fall semester 2009, the total number of criminal incidents jumped more than 25 percent to 301 incidents, up from 240 in fall 2008.

Theft was the most frequent crime, increasing from 146 incidents in fall 2008 to 183 in 2009 — also a 25 percent increase. Substance abuse violations, usually involving marijuana use in residence halls, rose 46 percent, and reports of harassment tripled.

The only area to show a significant drop in crime was criminal mischief — such as graffiti and broken windows — which dropped 33 percent.

Jules Martin, vice president for public safety, says the increase in reported crimes is not necessarily evidence of an increase in real crime, but rather the result of increasing student trust in the department's ability to solve problems.

"We do all the things we can do and more to make sure we keep the incidents of crime down. Unfortunately, they have gone up," he said.

Since 2007, Public Safety has saved more than $1 million in re-engineering techniques and an additional $552,000 annually by slashing overtime hours worked by officers. Guard overtime pay ranges from $23 to $34 an hour — meaning NYU's savings translate to between 16,000 and 24,000 fewer hours worked by Public Safety officers each year.

Michael Pidoto, president of the Local One Security Officers Union, sees a link between the cost-cutting and the rise in crime.

"No matter what, when you reduce the amount of man hours, you're going to increase the amount of crime," Pidoto said. "And the more [the administration] reduces, the more that's going to climb."

Jonathan Kassa, executive director of Security on Campus, Inc., a non-profit campus security organization, agreed.

"If you want to find out a school's priorities, look at the budget," Kassa said, noting criminals may take advantage of reduced patrols.

Although NYU prohibits guards from speaking with the media, officers speaking on background differed on whether they had personally noticed an increase in occurrences of crime.

Martin was adamant that the cost cuts — which have led to decreases in the number of officers in dorms and has left open academic buildings unguarded — are not a detriment to campus safety.

"I think the incidence of crime is in no way related to the number of dollars that we get in this department," he said.

Kassa noted that rarely does one issue lie behind a jump in crime.

"It's probably not all one or the other. It can actually be a combination of the two," he said.
Kassa recommends several steps schools can take to combat an increase in crime, including stressing the importance of communicating with staff and students.

For years, Jay Zwicker, NYU's crime prevention manager, has made it a priority to educate students about theft. Last year, the department offered 46 safety-themed orientations to new NYU students.

"We want to bring a dose of reality that if you provide an opportunity for somebody to take your property, it's going to happen more often than not," Zwicker said.

Joe Yerardi is enterprise editor.